Review: Samsung’s new ARM Chromebook gets by without Intel inside

The $249 Chromebook delivers surprisingly good performance for the price.

Enlarge / Samsung's new Chromebook uses an ARM processor, but you may not notice the difference.

Andrew Cunningham

If you've used a smartphone or tablet at any point in the last five years or so, you have ARM to thank for it. The company doesn't actually manufacture any of its own chips, but it licenses its low-power CPU architectures and instruction sets to others like Samsung, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Apple, who all use the designs to build better battery life into tiny devices. The company isn't content with its niche, however: it has PCs and servers in its sights, and we're going to be seeing ARM chips in many more devices in the next year or two.

Samsung's recently announced ARM-based Chromebook is one of these devices: a laptop-shaped computer that uses a tablet-like processor. Using these low-power, low-cost CPUs is one reason why these new Chromebooks cost an impressive $249, rather than $449 like their current Intel-based counterparts. The biggest question is whether users of this new, cheaper Chromebook will care that they're not running Intel inside.

Hardware: Good enough, especially for $249

Enlarge/ The new Chromebook bears a more-than-coincidental resemblance with the MacBook Air when opened up.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ Compared to the MacBook Air in profile, however, it's considerably chunkier.

Andrew Cunningham

Samsung's new Chromebook should be more or less familiar to anyone who has used the Intel-based Series 550 model from earlier this year, though the latest model is slimmer (0.7 inches thin compared to 0.8) and lighter (2.42 pounds compared to 3.3). Both the screen and the base of the laptop are all plastic, and display a slight amount of flex under pressure, but considering the price the materials seem to fit together reasonably well. One jarring detail is its bulgy hinge, which isn't a problem when the laptop is open but which sticks out from the lid when it's closed, which is awkward if you're stacking anything on top of it.

Enlarge/ The new Chromebook's hinge bulges out from the top of the computer, which is pretty darn awkward.

Andrew Cunningham

Most of the laptop's ports are located on the back in my least favorite configuration: all crammed together right next to each other. As with other laptops that do this, using any USB cables or thumb drives that are significantly wider than the USB port itself blocks access to the neighboring port, and having no USB port available on either side of the laptop makes it more difficult to plug in and remove drives and accessories quickly. The power adapter also uses a thin, fragile-looking plug that worked fine for me but may not stand up to much horseplay.

The laptop has an HDMI port capable of 1080p output, one USB 2.0 port, and one USB 3.0 port on the back, along with an included USB Ethernet dongle for wired connectivity. It also has a small access port for a SIM card. Using the HDMI port, at least in the current Chrome OS software, is a bit iffy. For the one TV I had to test the laptop with, the Chromebook would output sound but not video, so if you're looking to this $249 Chromebook for its utility as a home theater PC, you may want to reconsider. Chrome OS also continues to lack an extended desktop mode for multi-monitor users.

The inclusion of USB 3.0 is nice and doesn't cost anything extra, since the Exynos 5 SoC supports it natively, but it's a bit superfluous in this particular laptop—the limited nature of Chrome OS means you won't be making many large file transfers. The laptop's SD card reader and headphone jack are located on the left side, while two loud-but-tinny stereo speakers are located on the bottom. On the inside, the laptop features dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 for connectivity; there doesn't appear to be an option to utilize the available SIM card slot, though its presence indicates that mobile broadband may be available later.

Enlarge/ The MacBook Air comparisons continue: their black-on-silver keyboards are very similar.

Open the laptop's lid and you'll see a black chiclet keyboard with a common Chromebook layout. This includes browser navigation, brightness, volume, and power buttons across the top row instead of traditional function keys, an inverted T-block of half-height arrow keys, and a search key in place of caps lock. Fans of INTERNET YELLING can still choose to revert the search key's behavior to that of a caps lock key if desired. The keyboard is shallow, but the keys feel firm and anyone used to a chiclet keyboard from any other manufacturer should be able to type at full speed after a bit of acclimation.

Enlarge/ The new Chromebook, like past models, has a search key in place of the caps lock key by default.

Andrew Cunningham

Below the keyboard is a plastic multitouch trackpad that behaves well enough—basic gestures like tap to click, two-finger right-click, and two-finger scrolling work as intended (the two-finger scrolling is of the inverted, "natural" variety by default, though this can be reversed in the settings by disabling "simple scrolling"). Unfortunately, I found the trackpad's palm rejection to be less than fantastic. My cursor would routinely jump to earlier parts of documents I was working on, interrupting my flow and generally making a nuisance of itself.

Above the keyboard are an 11.6", 1366x768 display and a VGA webcam flanked by microphone pinholes. The screen's brightness is good but its contrast and viewing angles are terrible, as is to be expected in a computer this cheap. The vertical viewing angles are slightly worse than the horizontal, but they're both pretty bad—viewing the screen from anything other than dead-on makes the computer very difficult to use.

One of the nicer side effects of going with an ARM SoC is that the new Chromebook is completely fanless. As someone whose 2010 MacBook Air is routinely running its fans at full-tilt, I can say that a fanless system is conspicuously (and pleasantly) quiet by comparison. Its bottom does get a little warm during heavy use, but no warmer than most smartphones or tablets do, and certainly not enough to feel dangerous.

Software: Chrome OS is Chrome OS

Enlarge/ Chrome OS includes some new tutorials that demystify the operating system.

Andrew Cunningham

Like the Chrome browser, Chrome OS is being steadily developed, though changes tend to be gradual and often subtle. The biggest change to Chrome OS since its introduction was probably the Aura interface, which introduced true windowed multitasking back in April. Since then the changes have been mostly gentle touches and adjustments. The interface should be pretty simple to grasp for anyone who's used to the Windows 7 desktop, and the "Get Started" app (new since the last time I used Chrome OS) that launches automatically the first time you sign in should be enough to familiarize newcomers with Chrome OS' features.

Enlarge/ Chrome OS is a regular windowed operating system, when you get right down to it.

Andrew Cunningham

One thing about Chrome OS that has remained the same since its introduction is that its strength is also its weakness. Having a browser on top of lightweight Linux underpinnings makes for quick boot times, snappy performance, and an uncluttered interface. However, it also severely limits the device's functionality relative to a Windows PC, especially if you're not a heavy Google user. Having a Google account gets you built-in bookmark and data syncing with your desktops and a built-in (if lightweight) office suite in the form of Google Drive and Docs. If you're not already a Google and Chrome user on your regular computer, though, you're going to find the Chromebook very limiting, even as a companion computer.

The real story here is that Chrome OS runs well on ARM processors, and if you don't need the extra performance of the bigger Chromebook 550's dual-core Celeron, you won't even notice the difference. If you're coming from one of the older Intel Atom models, you're actually in for a sizable performance increase, especially when dealing with Flash and video.

They finally got the price down, which is nice, but I remain convinced that consumers don't really want devices that only really run a web browser.

If it ran android, that could be interesting-- android in a super cheap laptop form factor, with touch on the screen, could make a splash, due to the vast number of apps available for the platform.

The problem is that you can buy a perfectly performant 7" tablet with a cheapo bluetooth keyboard and essentially get that for $250 right now, with better battery life. You can't hit that price at 10" yet, but does anyone think it'll take long to get there?

To Google's credit, they got chrome, its extensions, and native client to the point where most of those android apps could theoretically be rewritten to run inside the browser-- but without market share nobody will bother to do it, so the point is moot.

I think it is perfect for schools from 8-14 years old. Has saved to the cloud for homework. Smart move for a dumb down durable computer that will just work that is hard to mess up and easy to fix. Kudos to Google.

I've got enough computing devices already but if this had been available 2 years ago, I would have gotten this instead of the crappy Intel Atom netbooks selling in the same price range. (And no, the Intel Atom netbooks have not gotten much better from looking at the options.)

They finally got the price down, which is nice, but I remain convinced that consumers don't really want devices that only really run a web browser.

If it ran android, that could be interesting-- android in a super cheap laptop form factor, with touch on the screen, could make a splash, due to the vast number of apps available for the platform.

The problem is that you can buy a perfectly performant 7" tablet with a cheapo bluetooth keyboard and essentially get that for $250 right now, with better battery life. You can't hit that price at 10" yet, but does anyone think it'll take long to get there?

This isn't something you have actually researched I gather.

9-10" tablets start at 118USD. Some are likely better than others. But it ought to be fairly obvious that lesser known companies are producing cheaper products than highend companies like Samsung, Asus and Apple.

I want to want one of these, I really do. I just do too much stuff outside of a web browser or indeed the warm embrace of Google's fatherly arms to be productive on one of these. I also don't think the compromises you're making are yet worth the pay-off.. I'd expect the battery life and build quality to be much higher for something that is so (at least from the perspective of someone who uses normal computers) restricted.

Good luck to them though, I'll definitely be checking back with them every year or so.

Considering that a lot of the cost in making an electronic device is marketing and shipping, which are roughly constant, and therefore a big chunk of the cost of a cheap device, I wonder what the profit margin on something like this is. Doubling the price to $500 (still cheap) gets you a real AMD netbook which has both the CPU and GPU to do whatever you want.

Maybe schools and libraries would be interested? Imagine going to the library and checking out one of these for a few hours; sign in and you get all your Google stuff, and they're cheap enough that failed computers aren't so costly to replace.

[9-10" tablets start at 118USD. Some are likely better than others. But it ought to be fairly obvious that lesser known companies are producing cheaper products than highend companies like Samsung, Asus and Apple.

They aren't just lesser known, they're low quality chinese knockoffs. Lets take a step back from internet pedantry and agree that those $120 9" tablets aren't real alternatives to the admittedly $200 but infinitely superior nexus7.

They finally got the price down, which is nice, but I remain convinced that consumers don't really want devices that only really run a web browser.

If it ran android, that could be interesting-- android in a super cheap laptop form factor, with touch on the screen, could make a splash, due to the vast number of apps available for the platform.

The problem is that you can buy a perfectly performant 7" tablet with a cheapo bluetooth keyboard and essentially get that for $250 right now, with better battery life. You can't hit that price at 10" yet, but does anyone think it'll take long to get there?

This isn't something you have actually researched I gather.

9-10" tablets start at 118USD. Some are likely better than others. But it ought to be fairly obvious that lesser known companies are producing cheaper products than highend companies like Samsung, Asus and Apple.

Those tablets you linked to either have 800 x 600 displays (which makes them useless for text/ doc editing) or have resistive touchscreens.

A better option would be any of the last gen 10" tegra 2 tablets, which are now selling for ~$250

[9-10" tablets start at 118USD. Some are likely better than others. But it ought to be fairly obvious that lesser known companies are producing cheaper products than highend companies like Samsung, Asus and Apple.

They aren't just lesser known, they're low quality chinese knockoffs. Lets take a step back from internet pedantry and agree that those $120 9" tablets aren't real alternatives to the admittedly $200 but infinitely superior nexus7.

Nah, I won't.

If I wanted a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard I'd prefer this, over my Nexus 7 (I don't use my Nexus 7 to write documents, that's not what I purchased it for).

I think the Nexus 7's 7" screen would be to small for such an application. And the specs of this 178USD device is just fine, is has an IPS screen, Android 4.0 and the required bluetooth.

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I'd never purchase the above of course with the Nexus 10 comming out should I desire such an device. I just thought that the notion that nothing but Samsung, Asus, Microsoft and Apple exists as very narrowminded. Equally so for the statement as branding them as "cheap Chinese knockoffs (edit: Knockoffs of what btw.? please do elaborate what they're knocking off by producing tablet computers. You're claiming it's not real Arm CPU's, or not a real Android OS, what is your assertion?)", compared to products that's also manufactured in China.

Frankly we have no idea how these devices perform, or what their build quality is. But I assume they work as advertised.

@uno2tres

The one I linked seems to have better specs. The cheapest one would indeed kinda suck for office applications. The particular store has 73 different models though, looking at a few I found one that seemed resonable (ie. the one I linked).

I would be all over this if they charged $350 instead of $250, put in a bigger battery, a better screen (not in terms of resolution, just viewing angle/color and bezel size), used metal instead of plastic, and fixed all little corners they obviously cut to hit the $249 mark.

They finally got the price down, which is nice, but I remain convinced that consumers don't really want devices that only really run a web browser.

If it ran android, that could be interesting-- android in a super cheap laptop form factor, with touch on the screen, could make a splash, due to the vast number of apps available for the platform.

The problem is that you can buy a perfectly performant 7" tablet with a cheapo bluetooth keyboard and essentially get that for $250 right now, with better battery life. You can't hit that price at 10" yet, but does anyone think it'll take long to get there?

To Google's credit, they got chrome, its extensions, and native client to the point where most of those android apps could theoretically be rewritten to run inside the browser-- but without market share nobody will bother to do it, so the point is moot.

I'm not so sure about that.

Was talking with my ex when I dropped the kids off today and she was talking about getting something like this for the kitchen to get recipes, check email and simple stuff like that. And she is not a techie person.

I personally feel the nexus7 would be a far better choice for that use case. There are tons of recipe apps, the android gmail app is better than the gmail web client, it'll take up much less space on your kitchen counter, you can play netflix (the ARM chromebook does not work with netflix), you can run searches and whatnot hands-free when your hands are busy/dirty cooking, and the kids can use it to play games too. And hey, you'll save fifty bucks.

This is for an older model, but it seems you could install Ubuntu by switching the dev switch on and updating the boot manager to allow it.

I have one of the Cr-48s, and ran it stock until some time after Ubuntu 11.10 dropped, when I installed that. It's currently running Xubuntu 12.10, which is a better fit with the cheap trackpad, single core Atom, RAM limited to 2GB (Atom limitation), etc. In order to do this, though, I did more than mess with the boot manager; I installed a proper BIOS and wiped the drive, because 16GB of SSD drive is too small to share with an OS I don't use. And that needs to be doable on this device, too.

I would get this if it had Android on it too, but to be honest with ya I'd rather had a Asus Infinity Pad. It's got Chrome, you gave tons of apps thru the Play program, has a really good IPS screen that you can see in angles and in sunlight, and can be a decent replacement for a budget laptop if you want to. It had really good battery life with up to 16 hrs with keyboard dock and even though $650 might make people wince a little it's worth the price to me. Looks like i'm getting something at tax time!!

I'm really not a fan of how chrome OS replaces control/windows/alt (or control/alt/command on a mac) with only control/alt.

I use all three of those modifier keys all day long, and equally as often for each and cannot imagine any functional operating system without it.

This is a joke, surely?How old are you? Keyboards haven't always had windows keys (some still don't).

I think it's pretty safe to call Ubuntu a functional OS, and I've never used a windows key in it (AFAIK it doesn't do anything).

There is a lot of shortcuts bound to it in Ubuntu actually. Super Key + M opens the music dash for example. It's not necessary but is nice to have.

I wouldn't mind an ARM laptop especially at that price. Too bad Google has yet to bring Chromebooks outside U.S and U.K.

I'd prefer if it ran Ubuntu though or some other linux distro. Maybe Canonical should partner up with a manufacturer and make something like that. From the Ubuntu on ARM version I ran for a bit on my touchpad I never really felt like any programs I needed were missing.

I personally feel the nexus7 would be a far better choice for that use case. There are tons of recipe apps, the android gmail app is better than the gmail web client, it'll take up much less space on your kitchen counter, you can play netflix (the ARM chromebook does not work with netflix), you can run searches and whatnot hands-free when your hands are busy/dirty cooking, and the kids can use it to play games too. And hey, you'll save fifty bucks.

"Samsung has opted to include a smaller and cheaper 30Wh battery in the ARM-based Chromebook"

Are you sure about that? As far as I know it only has a 2 cell 4000 mAh battery, which is what 7" tablets usually have. 10" ones usually have 7,000 mAh batteries (9,000 for Nexus 10, 11,500 for iPad 3/4).

So the battery should be more around 15 Whr, not 30 Whr. Where does it say it has a 30Whr?

The article states, "The new Chromebook bears a more-than-coincidental resemblance with the MacBook Air when opened up." The implication is that Samsung copied Apple on the design. However, if you have paid attention to the Intel ultrabook specifications, I'd say that both Apple and Samsung are merely following some of Intel's advice. Kind of rude to intimate otherwise.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.